tech planet

Tuesday, 22 January 2013

EA has announced that its popular video game Need for Speed Most Wanted will be landing on the new Nintendo Wii U game console this March. The video game will be available in North America on March 19, 2013 and will launch in Europe on March 21. Most Wanted turns players loose in a connected, open world where they can race, chase each other, run from police, and explore with friends.

The Wii U version of the game has some exclusive features just for the Nintendo console. It has a new local co-op mode called Co-driver. This mode allows one player to use the Wii Remote or Wii U Controller and the other player to use the Wii U GamePad. The touchscreen on the GamePad allows players to navigate using an interactive map, distract pursuing cops, switch between day and night modes, and to activate enhanced performance features for the car.

The touchscreen control can also be used to control the amount of traffic on the road and more. It will also allow players to choose vehicle mods, switch cars, and track milestones. The Wii U game also comes with five special cars including the McLaren F1 LM, the Lamborghini Aventador J, Pagani Zonda R, Bugatti Veyron Grand Sport Vitesse, and the Hennessey Venom GT Spyder.

It’s a hassle having to look through various drawers to find a battery that’s in the size you need. It’s even a larger hassle if you have a bunch of batteries but can’t find one in the size you need. Panasonic’s emergency flashlight took that into consideration by allowing people to use it with batteries in various sizes.

For everything else, there’s the Battery.Family.

It’s basically four 1.5-volt batteries housed in one huge size D battery. With each ‘family’, you get a size C, size AA, and size AAA battery aside from the D-sized one. The AAA actually contains the power source, while each of the larger casings just contain the contacts to fit the appropriately-sized battery. It’s like those Russian Matryoshka stacking dolls, but in battery form.

Battery.Family was designed by Soohwan Kim, Junho Yoon, Dohoon Lee and Hyojin Park and it is, unfortunately, just a concept design for now. But here’s to hoping.

D printing has come a long way, and the devices have become affordable enough for people to have them in their homes. Now, a Dutch architecture studio is planning on construction a complete house using a 3D printer.

The Dutch studio Universe Architecture will use a giant D-Shape printer to output their Landscape House. The printer can print sections of 20 feet by 30 feet in a single go. It uses a mixture of sand and a binding agent to print the parts of the Möbius strip-inspired house.

The printer will create hollow sections, which will be filled with fiber-reinforced concrete for strength. While other smaller projects have been attempted, this will be the first 3D-printed full-scale residence in the world. Based on current estimates, it will take around 18 months to create.

As the technology becomes faster and more commonplace, it could allow for the production of houses at a much lower cost – and in forms not typically achievable using conventional building techniques.

News of impending fatherhood affects men in different ways. Some guys pump their fists. Others light cigars. A few flee. When 33-year-old Colin Furze learned that his girlfriend was pregnant, he channeled his paternal excitement into building the world’s fastest baby stroller. The twin-exhaust, 10-horsepower, gasoline-fueled pram can accelerate to speeds nearly fast enough for the highway in less than 30 seconds.

Furze, a plumber in Stamford, England, rode BMX bikes as a kid and missed the adrenaline rush as an adult. So in his twenties, he sought new thrills. “For some reason, I thought building a nice big fire was the answer,” he says of his first project. Furze’s 50,000-square-foot inferno, which he lit by launching a rocket into a mountain of wood, earned him a spot in the 2006 Guinness World Records book. Once Furze saw his name in print, he was addicted. Every two years he strives for a new mark. He holds the record for the fastest mobility scooter and, until recently, the world’s longest bike. 2012 became the year of the stroller.

The build began with a baby carriage that Furze and his girlfriend, Charlotte, bought. He carefully measured every piece to construct a motorized look-alike. Thanks to a previous experiment, Furze had a steel roll cage lying around, which he cut and welded into the new stroller’s skeleton.

Accelerating and braking via foot pedals could send Furze off course on rough roads, so he set all controls into a handlebar (see “How It Works,” below) and built a stable platform for the driver to stand on. His first test-drive melted a set of skateboard wheels he’d attached to the platform. “It was quite pathetic,” Furze says. A few days later, he tried again with plastic caster wheels; that time, road vibration rattled his feet numb. Furze eventually achieved a cushy ride with thick tires from an old mobility scooter.

His son, Jake, was born in September 2012, and a month later Furze cleared 50 mph while riding his stroller on a nearby drag strip—the first world record of its kind. He’s quick to note that he has no intention of putting Jake in the speeding carriage. But that hasn’t stopped him from spooking onlookers with a convincing stand-in: a baby doll wrapped patriotically in a Union Jack

Laptops and smartphones are already easy enough to carry around and use anywhere, but that doesn’t stop designers from coming up with crazy futuristic computer concepts. This concept from designer JakubÂ ZÃ¡hoÅ™is a sleek computer that can be used anywhere there’s an expanse of glass at your disposal.

The computer works by first adhering to a smooth glass surface. The computer then scans the surface to determine its size and shape.

After figuring out how large the surface is, the computer projects its display onto the glass along with the touch-sensitive input system.

The concept would make it easy to project pictures, movies or presentations almost anywhere. Because the display stretches to fit the size of the available glass, the display could be much larger than that of a laptop but simpler to operate than a projector.

Every January, millions of people resolve to get more exercise. Health-club memberships spike as does interest in fitness trackers, which use accelerometers to record activity. The trouble with those devices, though, is that they rely on binary tracking algorithms—moving or not—so they generally can’t tell the difference between a steady jog and vacuuming the living room. The Amiigo is the first tracker that can discriminate between exercises, tally reps, and accurately tabulate calories burned.

The device consists of a shoe clip and a Bluetooth-enabled bracelet, each with a three-axis accelerometer, microcontroller, battery, and enough flash memory to store up to five days’ worth of data; the band also contains an infrared blood-oxygen and pulse sensor. When the wearer opens the Amiigo smartphone app, it prompts the bracelet to transmit its data. Algorithms process that data to determine what kind of exercises the wearer has done (barbell curls versus hammer curls, for example) and how much of each one. The Amiigo recognizes more than 100 exercises, but the company plans to release app updates to include more—from sit-ups to bat swings to Frisbee tosses.